Home sweet home. Prince William and Duchess Kate have a new humble abode in Windsor, England — and it will be close to Queen Elizabeth II.
Her Majesty, 96, relocated from Buckingham Palace in London to Windsor Castle in the countryside earlier this year. Her residence is only a 10-minute walk from Adelaide Cottage, per the BBC. Insiders exclusively told Us Weekly earlier in the summer that the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge were moving to be closer to both the queen and Duchess Kate’s mother, Carole Middleton.
“The whole family [is] extremely excited to be moving to Windsor, not just because it will bring them closer to [Queen Elizabeth II] but it’s a perfect happy medium that brings them closer to London than if they chose to settle full time in Berkshire or Anmer Hall,” a source explained in June.
William and Kate, both 40, will hold onto vacation home Anmer Hall in Norfolk and their Kensington Palace apartment in London, which they moved into in 2013. However, the couple, who married in April 2011, and their children — Prince George, 9, Princess Charlotte, 7, and Prince Louis, 4 — will primarily be based in Windsor. The little ones will spend much of their time in Berkshire for school, which is located less than 10 miles from Adelaide Cottage.
“The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge have today announced that Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis will attend Lambrook School in Berkshire from September 2022,” Kensington Palace told Us in a statement on Monday, August 22.
In June, a source told Us that the children are very excited about living outside the city.
“Charlotte can go horse riding in the open air and George can play football on extensive grounds,” the insider noted at the time. “Louis loves being close to his great-grandma, and he’s going to take tennis lessons this summer. They’re starting over there, and George, Charlotte and Louis are really excited about going to a new school and being in the countryside in the fresh air where there’s lots of space for them to play freely.”
Their new home has plenty of space to explore. Adelaide Cottage is set on Windsor Great Park, which has over 5,000 acres of land, including three horse riding parks and designated areas for fishing, mountain biking and golfing.
It also has quite a history. Adelaide Cottage is a with four-bedroom house that was originally a teahouse for Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen, King William IV’s queen consort, in 1831. It later was home to Peter Townsend, who later dated Queen Elizabeth II’s sister Princess Margaret.
“In the spring of 1945, with our second child on the way, the King proposed that we should move our abode to a small ‘grace and favor’ house, Adelaide Cottage, in the home park of Windsor Castle,” Townsend wrote in his 1978 memoir, Time and Chance: An Autobiography, referring to his first wife, Rosemary Townsend. “It was a generous gesture for which I felt deeply grateful, despite the limited amenities of the House.”
Peter and Rosemary left Adelaide Cottage when they divorced in 1952.
